Lessons Learned: Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and President - Healthcare Business, Mastercard
In our ‘Lessons Learned’ series, we profile professionals to aspire to, collating and sharing their stories, experience and words of wisdom. Here at Suzie Walker Executive Search, we encourage leaders and future leaders to learn from others in order to inspire and guide their own journeys.
We hope that Raja’s story inspires you as much as it has inspired us.
About Raja
Raja is a renowned innovative thinker and transformational business leader who was listed in the 2021 Forbes ‘World’s Most Influential CMOs’ hall of fame. He has been Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and President at Mastercard since 2013, leading transformational strategies, embracing new technologies and pushing purpose-driven initiatives. His past experience includes a senior leadership role at Citigroup and Head-of role at Unilever.
In addition to Raja’s role at Mastercard, he is on the board of board of PPL Corp (NYSE:PPL) and on non-profit boards, including Bon Secours Mercy Health, New York City Ballet, Cintrifuse, ANA and World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). He regularly posts insightful newsletters on LinkedIn for the benefit of others, including a recent post on Demystifying the Metaverse.
Career highlights
Raja’s career highlights are numerous. More recently, in 2020, he launched the ‘True Name’ MasterCard credit card so that trans and nonbinary customers could display their chosen names, overcoming obstacles with banking partners along the way. He moved Mastercard’s inclusivity efforts beyond the company itself to positively impact people’s lives.
In 2021, he published ' Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow's Consumers’. He wants marketers to understand technological development, writing the book so that others could “understand how to combine the power of creativity with data and breakthrough technology to drive business growth”.
His work has been celebrated by the WFA, Forbes, Ad Week, Campaign, Business Insider, Billboard, The CMO Club, and many more.
Words of wisdom
"There is an urgent need for the marketing community to really take a hard look at what they are doing and how they are doing it to connect the dots between the activity they are doing and the business outcomes in a credible and clear fashion.”
“More and more of what marketers will be benefiting from are three areas: partnerships, emerging technologies and data.”
What others say
“Raja does a brilliant job showing how to reimagine and reframe marketing by combining the power of creativity with predictive sciences and breakthrough technologies to drive business growth.”
Ann Mukherjee, Chairman & CEO, Pernod Ricard NA
“Any marketer who wants to build brands that stand the test of time in the post digital age requires a balanced approach to marketing where science rules and storytelling amplifies. Raja is a true polymath who has struck the right balance."
Antonio Lucio, former CMO of Facebook, Visa, HP and PepsiCo Int.
If you feel inspired by Raja’s story and ready to move towards the next stage in your career, please get in touch or connect with us/send a message on LinkedIn.
With warmest regards,
the Suzie Walker Executive Search team
Sources:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-vrajamannar
https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2021/09/29/worlds-most-influential-cmos-2021/?sh=28bc12d24b55
https://newsroom.mastercard.com/asia-pacific/people/rajarajamannar
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quantum-Marketing-Mastering-Tomorrows-Consumers/dp/1400223954/ref=sr_1_1?crid=33T5TZ89TPAH9&keywords=RAJA+RAJAMANNAR&qid=1645096445&sprefix=raja+rajamannar%2Caps%2C598&sr=8-1
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/11/28/mastercards-raja-rajamannar-the-role-the-cmo-being-eroded
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